Whenever I set the weather to overcast and rainy on TSW2 it looks like it's dusk or like we're about to go into the apocalypse. I know that things can sometimes be like that, but in real life, it can still be quite bright outside even when raining and overcast. What would be the best setting to tweak either in the game or in engine.ini to just generally make the ambient level brighter I'm these conditions without screwing up the contrast for sunnier weather?
Set the cloud level between about 3/4’s and 4/5th’s of maximum with precipitation at max. That should do it.
I tried that, but what it does is makes it look like the sun is breaking through as rain clears away. It's a half baked work around but isn't a solution.
Beyond there's not much you can do sadly. To be fair, when it’s entirely overcast and heavy rain it’s not normally all that bright. The world being too dark is not an accusation often levelled at TSW!
It's just that it's too extreme. It goes from crazy bright bloom in the sun, with extremely dark shadows, to super gloomy and dark in the rain. It looks like a movie rather than real life which, in England at least is usually rather dull and in the middle. We have so many overcast grey days which are often quite bright, but just not sunny. It's the ambient lighting level that needs the tweak really.
Yep. I’m totally with you. I’ve been banging on about the state of lighting in this game for years...it’s total mess. All we can do is keep banging on about it in the hope that the developers will do something about it. I honestly believe it’s getting worse, not better, too.
I don't think it's getting worse. What do you think is worse? Admittedly I've only had the game since about November so I don't know what it was like before the Bakerloo line came out. I've done some engine.ini tweaks to reduce the bloom and that was the major thing for me. It looks a million times better, but it's sorely missing an ambient light level slider like TS2021 has.
Tunnels are way worse than they've ever been. On East Coastway, for example, the tunnel works as you would expect. The last 2 routes have had all sorts of weird lighting artefacts going on, large chunks of the tunnel allowing light into the cab and finally fog in the tunnel that gradually disappears as you get further in. Additionally (on the last two routes) as you approach the tunnel exit there is no weather and then as you exit it magically reappears. The same thing happens at St .Pancras. It's a hot mess and wasn't like this (or certainly wasn't anything like as bad as this) before LGV was released.
The only solution I know is to use Reshade to increase either contrast, exposure or both. Normally I avoid to use cloudy weather in dawn/dusk due to this fact. It looks fine during daylight but with too low light conditions is just what you are facing now. Cheers
I was doing 10:30am, overcast, no rain, and it looks like 5am. I've tried playing with lots of engine.ini parameters but nothing seems to affect the overall ambient light exposure and brighten everything. I've tried tweaking the gamma but that just washes everything out, and I've tried playing with r.color.mid. that helps a bit, but it's not the same as the ambient light slider on TS.
If you prefer the engine.ini you can try: r.Color.Max=1.0 r.Color.Mid=0.60 r.Color.Min=0.005 That works as a gamma alike setting. It changes the mid tones (nominal value is 0.5) and increases a bit the min value for black (nominal value is 0). Try adjusting the second and third variables to tweak the darkness. I used it in the past but I prefer Reshade now. Cheers
I did actually find that suggestion and tried it earlier, but it just made everything looked washed out. Not for me. I want everything brighter, not washed out. So far, the best I've found is to leave min/max alone, and bump the mid up to 0.8. It doesn't really fix it properly, but it's marginally brighter.
